


Down and Idle

by theskywasblue



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-12
Updated: 2019-08-12
Packaged: 2020-08-19 14:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20211619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: They return from India looking like victims of war.





	Down and Idle

They return from India looking like victims of war. 

Essentially they are. Gojyo has a new, ugly scar along his jaw, and his shoulder will probably never be the same. Hakkai’s limp is painful to think about, not to mention look at; but it’s the way his clothes hang off him, like rags off a scarecrow, that gets to Gojyo most of all.

Hakkai had never been a particularly well-fed guy, but true to his fucking martyr complex, he was always the one giving up his part of his portion, or skipping meals entirely when their supplies ran low. Not to mention that they all lost weight - most of it muscle- while laid-up recovering from their injuries. Even Goku had to add notches to his belt, just to keep his pants from falling down.

But the reality of belts with extra notches cut in them and clothes brought in ever-tighter by Hakkai’s careful stitching doesn’t really get deep into Gojyo until they’re weeks home already. One night, he’s sitting on the bed in the semi-dark, not really thinking about anything, belly full of a good dinner with his brain just winding down into the slow calm that hopefully means a good night’s sleep with no nightmares, when Hakkai walks in from the shower, wearing nothing but a damp towel. He goes to the dresser, and while he stands there sorting through the drawer’s tidy contents, looking for whatever pair of sleeping pants he’s got in mind, his towel slides down, just enough to show the top of his ass and the base of his spine, and it strikes Gojyo at once - not how skinny he is now, exactly, but how skinny he is _still_; and how he somehow still looks about a hundred times better than he did in those first weeks, when Gojyo’s day-to-day was a low, constant hum of pain and worry, and no one knew if Sanzo would ever walk walk again.

(He did, of course, because he’s a stubborn bastard.)

“Is everything alright, Gojyo?” Hakkai tugs his pants up, turns around, fingers working deftly to twist the drawstring into a tidy bow. “You’re terribly quiet this evening.”

“Oh - uh yeah,” Gojyo smiles crookedly, abruptly aware that he’s probably been staring too long. “I was just thinking we need to feed you up more, that’s all.”

Hakkai chuckles, shaking his head, and steps forward, slotting himself between Gojyo’s knees. His hands move automatically to Gojyo’s hair, mindlessly smoothing the long strands. There’s a solid streak of silver in them now that Gojyo tries not to spend too much time looking at. 

There’s grey at Hakkai’s temples too, for that matter, but he makes it look sophisticated. 

“I’m that hard to look at, am I?”

“Hey now - I didn’t say that.” Gojyo slides his hands around the backs of Hakkai’s thighs, rubs up and down. He can feel the warmth of Hakkai’s skin through the thin fabric, smell the soap he used in the shower. “Besides, I’m not exactly easy on the eyes these days myself.”

Hakkai clucks his tongue in quiet disapproval. “Come now Gojyo, you’ve always been -“

“Don’t say ‘beautiful’,” Gojyo laughs. “It’ll ruin the mood.”

“And what mood is that?”

He drags Hakkai a little closer, lets his forehead rest on the flat of Hakkai’s belly. Not concave anymore, at least. There was a point when Gojyo was sure they would all just disappear into themselves, starving and out of their minds. 

He would probably be happy to stay that way forever, just close to Hakkai, and quiet; except Hakkai shifts his weight, favouring his bad leg, making one of those little sounds of discomfort that he always seems to think Gojyo doesn’t notice. 

“Hey - you don’t have to stand there,” Gojyo pats the mattress, “take a load off.”

Hakkai’s laughs. “I was going to mend that tear in your jacket tonight.”

“You can still do that,” Gojyo promises. “Later.”

The bed they have now is bigger than the one they used to share, before they ever embarked on the world’s worst road trip, but Gojyo’s not sure they’ve ever treated it that way. He likes the feel of Hakkai’s ribs, expanding and contracting beneath his hand in the dark, and the way their legs tangle together. Hakkai must like it too, because he’s never argued. Whatever else is between them, they’ve always been able to trust touch, even when nothing else made sense. Hakkai’s hands are the only ones Gojyo knows won’t ever tear the skin off him. When the mark on the back of Gojyo’s neck used to burn, late at night, Hakkai would lay his hand over it and the buzz of his chi would be icy and sweet, all the way down Gojyo’s spine. It killed Gojyo that he couldn’t soothe whatever pain Hakkai felt the same way.

(Though Hakkai would probably say he had _other ways_ of doing it.) 

Hakkai’s hands are warm now, cradling the back of Gojyo’s head and drawing him into one of those slow, deep kisses that Gojyo absolutely fucking lives on these days - the kind that means they’re going to fool around for a while, maybe not even worry about getting off; the kind that steadies, and centers him, reminds him that they’re home. Afterwards, Gojyo will put the radio on, and have a smoke, and Hakkai will sit up by the glow of bedside lamp and fix the tear in Gojyo’s jacket, and probably the holes in all those socks he’s been setting aside for months. He’ll sneak his cold feet under Gojyo’s legs and when Gojyo squirms and demands, _is that any way to treat the guy you love, huh?_

Hakkai will simply laugh, and say, _I suppose it must be._

-End-

**Author's Note:**

> So Macavitykitsune has this genuinely funny tag on Tumblr - "When will Hakkai's butt return from war?" and I was going to write something funny, or at least irreverent inspired by it but...what can I say, I'm a sucker for soft angst and hurt/comfort.
> 
> (and also I just don't want them all to die at the end...please.)


End file.
